Stephen Cruz

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Year

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credited As

Comedy Central
The brouhaha that erupted over Stephen Colbert being named as successor to David Letterman's chair as host of CBS' The Late Show once again shined a light on the ongoing battle for the hearts and minds of the American public that is still raging between comedians and conservative pundits.
When news broke of Colbert's new role — providing him with potentially a much larger audience than his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report — right-wing commentators, especially Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh went on the offensive, decrying CBS' choice as the potential undoing of America.
It was just the latest volley in the feuds that have been going on for years… or at least since Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show in 1999. When the Hollywood Reporter released its list of the 35 Most Powerful People in New York Media, the list included a healthy dose of both conservative commentators (O'Reilly, Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity) and comedians (Stewart, Colbert, Jimmy Fallon).
It used to be that comedians made fun of politicians and the political types would just ignore it. That was in the days before cable gave comedians significantly more leeway to discuss politics than Johnny Carson could've ever imagined. To counter what they viewed as liberal bias, conservatives developed their own media stars to keep politicians from having to get dirty. So, who's winning the battle?
The Pundits
O'Reilly seems to by turns enjoy his tete-a-tetes with Stewart and to be infuriated by the platform that Comedy Central has given Stewart and Colbert to promote a "liberal agenda." Where he seems to have fun with Stewart, that playfulness doesn't always extend to Colbert, who based his character and show largely on O'Reilly. "Colbert has built an entire career on pleasing the left," O'Reilly said on his show. "It'll be hard to fathom that 40% of Americans who describe themselves as conservative will watch Colbert."
O'Reilly isn't alone in his view that comedians are undermining the message that conservative policymakers are trying to deliver. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has long sparred with Bill Maher over the views that he expresses on his HBO show. Coulter, whose books include How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), is a frequent guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, offering a counter to the host on everything from welfare reform to immigration. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, first on The View and now on Fox &amp; Friends, has also frequently called out comedians — most notably her former View co-hosts Rosie O'Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg — while promoting her own largely conservative views on subjects. As President Barack Obama found out, the conservative pundits don’t want politicians in on the joke either. When the President appeared on Zach Galifianakis' web series Between Two Ferns, O'Reilly and others went after what the felt was Obama's flippant treatment of a serious issue (healthcare reform). Of course, when O'Reilly said that "Abe Lincoln wouldn't have done it" it led to a series of jokes.
The Comedians
Really, the comedians largely have it easy. Making fun of politicians is a time honored tradition, and an American birthright. From newspaper cartoonists to Will Rogers to Saturday Night Live, there's always been someone taking shots at the powers-that-be. The difference is that more and more, comedians are offering an actual opinion on their beliefs beyond just the jokes, something that Maher on Politically Incorrect and one of his HBO predecessors Dennis Miller (now a conservative radio host) helped make fashionable. O'Donnell and Janeane Garofalo have long been outspoken on their views on gun control, women's rights, and a variety of other issues. While Stewart, Colbert, John Oliver and the rest of the Daily Show group point out hypocrisy in both political parties — similar to what SNL has done for nearly 40 years — they make little effort to conceal their glee at puncturing holes in the façades of conservative political figures like Michele Bachmann, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Rick Santorum. In a recent commentary on The Daily Beast, comedian Dean Obeidallah opined that conservatives "fear comedy because they aren't good at it."
Not everyone is thrilled with the political influence that comedians like Stewart and Colbert have come to wield. "The problem becomes, are they the principle source of information for the country? Do they begin to move in and occupy the place that Walter Cronkite occupied or Edward R. Murrow occupied?," media analyst Marvin Kalb said. "The unfortunate answer now is 'Yes,' they are occupying that space. The danger there is that people begin to take it too seriously and they begin to think that the joke is the reality."
Whether it's good or bad, there's little doubt that potshots from both sides, pundits and comedians, will continue unabated for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, we know enough as a society not to take either side too seriously… whether they're joking or not.
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DreamWorks
For the bulk of every Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, moose and squirrel would engage in high concept escapades that satirized geopolitics, contemporary cinema, and the very fabrics of the human condition. With all of that to work with, there's no excuse for why the pair and their Soviet nemeses haven't gotten a decent movie adaptation. But the ingenious Mr. Peabody and his faithful boy Sherman are another story, intercut between Rocky and Bullwinkle segments to teach kids brief history lessons and toss in a nearly lethal dose of puns. Their stories and relationship were much simpler, which means that bringing their shtick to the big screen would entail a lot more invention — always risky when you're dealing with precious material.
For the most part, Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman handles the regeneration of its heroes aptly, allowing for emotionally substance in their unique father-son relationship and all the difficulties inherent therein. The story is no subtle metaphor for the difficulties surrounding gay adoption, with society decreeing that a dog, no matter how hyper-intelligent, cannot be a suitable father. The central plot has Peabody hosting a party for a disapproving child services agent and the parents of a young girl with whom 7-year-old Sherman had a schoolyard spat, all in order to prove himself a suitable dad. Of course, the WABAC comes into play when the tots take it for a spin, forcing Peabody to rush to their rescue.
Getting down to personals, we also see the left brain-heavy Peabody struggle with being father Sherman deserves. The bulk of the emotional marks are hit as we learn just how much Peabody cares for Sherman, and just how hard it has been to accept that his only family is growing up and changing.
DreamWorks
But more successful than the new is the film's handling of the old — the material that Peabody and Sherman purists will adore. They travel back in time via the WABAC Machine to Ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, and the Trojan War, and 18th Century France, explaining the cultural backdrop and historical significance of the settings and characters they happen upon, all with that irreverent (but no longer racist) flare that the old cartoons enjoyed. And oh... the puns.
Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman is a f**king treasure trove of some of the most amazingly bad puns in recent cinema. This effort alone will leave you in awe.
The film does unravel in its final act, bringing the science-fiction of time travel a little too close to the forefront and dropping the ball on a good deal of its emotional groundwork. What seemed to be substantial building blocks do not pay off in the way we might, as scholars of animated family cinema, have anticipated, leaving the movie with an unfinished feeling.
But all in all, it's a bright, compassionate, reasonably educational, and occasionally funny if not altogether worthy tribute to an old favorite. And since we don't have our own WABAC machine to return to a time of regularly scheduled Peabody and Sherman cartoons, this will do okay for now.
If nothing else, it's worth your time for the puns.
3/5
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Summit via Everett Collection
You can imagine that Renny Harlin, director and one quadrant of the writing team for The Legend of Hercules, began his pitch as such: We'll start with a war, because lots of these things start with wars. It feels like this was the principal maxim behind a good deal of the creative choices in this latest update of the Ancient Greek myth. There are always horse riding scenes. There are generally arena battles. There are CGI lions, when you can afford 'em. Oh, and you've got to have a romantic couple canoodling at the base of a waterfall. Weaving them all together cohesively would be a waste of time — just let the common threads take form in a remarkably shouldered Kellan Lutz and action sequences that transubstantiate abjectly to and fro slow-motion.
But pervading through Lutz's shirtless smirks and accent continuity that calls envy from Johnny Depp's Alice in Wonderland performance is the obtrusive lack of thought that went into this picture. A proverbial grab bag of "the basics" of the classic epic genre, The Legend of Hercules boasts familiarity over originality. So much so that the filmmakers didn't stop at Hercules mythology... they barely started with it, in fact. There's more Jesus Christ in the character than there is the Ancient Greek demigod, with no lack of Gladiator to keep things moreover relevant. But even more outrageous than the void of imagination in the construct of Hercules' world is its script — a piece so comically dim, thin, and idiotic that you will laugh. So we can't exactly say this is a totally joyless time at the movies.
Summit via Everett Collection
Surrounding Hercules, a character whose arc takes him from being a nice enough strong dude to a nice enough strong dude who kills people and finally owns up to his fate — "Okay, fine, yes, I guess I'm a god" — are a legion of characters whose makeup and motivations are instituted in their opening scenes and never change thereafter. His de facto stepdad, the teeth-baring King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins), despises the boy for being a living tribute to his supernatural cuckolding; his half-brother Iphicles (Liam Garrigan) is the archetypical scheming, neutered, jealous brother figure right down to the facial scar. The dialogue this family of mongoloids tosses around is stunningly brainless, ditto their character beats. Hercules can't understand how a mystical stranger knows his identity, even though he just moments ago exited a packed coliseum chanting his name. Iphicles defies villainy and menace when he threatens his betrothed Hebe (Gaia Weiss), long in love with Hercules, with the terrible fate of "accepting [him] and loving [their] children equally!" And the dad... jeez, that guy must really be proud of his teeth.
With no artistic feat successfully accomplished (or even braved, really) by this movie, we can at the very least call it inoffensive. There is nothing in The Legend of Hercules with which to take issue beyond its dismal intellect, and in a genre especially prone to regressive activity, this is a noteworthy triumph. But you might not have enough energy by the end to award The Legend of Hercules with this superlative. Either because you'll have laughed yourself into a coma at the film's idiocy, or because you'll have lost all strength trying to fend it off.
1/5
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Lions Gate via Everett Collection
When we last left our heroes, they had conquered all opponents in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, returned home to their newly refurbished living quarters in District 12, and fallen haplessly to the cannibalism of PTSD. And now we're back! Hitching our wagons once again to laconic Katniss Everdeen and her sweet-natured, just-for-the-camera boyfriend Peeta Mellark as they gear up for a second go at the Capitol's killing fields.
But hold your horses — there's a good hour and a half before we step back into the arena. However, the time spent with Katniss and Peeta before the announcement that they'll be competing again for the ceremonial Quarter Quell does not drag. In fact, it's got some of the film franchise's most interesting commentary about celebrity, reality television, and the media so far, well outweighing the merit of The Hunger Games' satire on the subject matter by having Katniss struggle with her responsibilities as Panem's idol. Does she abide by the command of status quo, delighting in the public's applause for her and keeping them complacently saturated with her smiles and curtsies? Or does Katniss hold three fingers high in opposition to the machine into which she has been thrown? It's a quarrel that the real Jennifer Lawrence would handle with a castigation of the media and a joke about sandwiches, or something... but her stakes are, admittedly, much lower. Harvey Weinstein isn't threatening to kill her secret boyfriend.
Through this chapter, Katniss also grapples with a more personal warfare: her devotion to Gale (despite her inability to commit to the idea of love) and her family, her complicated, moralistic affection for Peeta, her remorse over losing Rue, and her agonizing desire to flee the eye of the public and the Capitol. Oftentimes, Katniss' depression and guilty conscience transcends the bounds of sappy. Her soap opera scenes with a soot-covered Gale really push the limits, saved if only by the undeniable grace and charisma of star Lawrence at every step along the way of this film. So it's sappy, but never too sappy.
In fact, Catching Fire is a masterpiece of pushing limits as far as they'll extend before the point of diminishing returns. Director Francis Lawrence maintains an ambiance that lends to emotional investment but never imposes too much realism as to drip into territories of grit. All of Catching Fire lives in a dreamlike state, a stark contrast to Hunger Games' guttural, grimacing quality that robbed it of the life force Suzanne Collins pumped into her first novel.
Once we get to the thunderdome, our engines are effectively revved for the "fun part." Katniss, Peeta, and their array of allies and enemies traverse a nightmare course that seems perfectly suited for a videogame spin-off. At this point, we've spent just enough time with the secondary characters to grow a bit fond of them — deliberately obnoxious Finnick, jarringly provocative Johanna, offbeat geeks Beedee and Wiress — but not quite enough to dissolve the mystery surrounding any of them or their true intentions (which become more and more enigmatic as the film progresses). We only need adhere to Katniss and Peeta once tossed in the pit of doom that is the 75th Hunger Games arena, but finding real characters in the other tributes makes for a far more fun round of extreme manhunt.
But Catching Fire doesn't vie for anything particularly grand. It entertains and engages, having fun with and anchoring weight to its characters and circumstances, but stays within the expected confines of what a Hunger Games movie can be. It's a good one, but without shooting for succinctly interesting or surprising work with Katniss and her relationships or taking a stab at anything but the obvious in terms of sending up the militant tyrannical autocracy, it never even closes in on the possibility of being a great one.
3.5/5
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Olivier Douliery/PictureGroup
There was an interview recently on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that did more damage to the GOP party than the entire shutdown. What happened? A Republican precinct chairman in North Carolina was interviewed on the show and said some really dumb, racist things. You could tell they were going to be in that vein when he said, "My best friend is black." Yup, that practically set up a neon sign. After the show aired, he then resigned his position.
Yes, I know it wasn't Ted Cruz doing something like that, but it did wind up being a bloody nose for the GOP, however small it may be. They probably don't even care, given that Congress has approval ratings lower than contracting ebola. Yes, I'm sure that many people would rather bleed from every orifice than trust politicians implicitly.
The thing is, when it comes to media, journalism has been king for many, many years. People would trust what was read in the newspapers and many news anchors were held in such high esteem that they might as well have been nominated for sainthood: Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer...the list goes on. But now the media is being viewed through a prism of mistrust. It seems like more people are listening to Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central than someone like Piers Morgan on CNN or anybody on FOX News.
What helps Stewart and Colbert (well, Stewart more, since Colbert is a persona) is they can take an irreverent view on it that is still surrounded by truth and can expose the hypocrisy of what goes on in the government. Maybe the media got too high up on its pedestal and began thinking it could tell people what it wanted to behind its own agenda, even under the pretense of fair reporting. The Comedy Central duo tend to get under the hood and shine their light on what goes on there. Maybe they could call themselves "America's Auto Mechanics."
So maybe people should hope that Stewart gets many more politicians to appear on his show to show what they really stand for instead of having it sanitized on the news. Maybe in a couple of decades from now, we'll look at Stewart like we looked at the other anchors. And that's no laughing matter.
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20th Century Fox
The list of novelists who have become successful screenwriters is small and tends to break down into two categories—those who stick to adapting their own material and those who write original fare or adapt the work of others. Check out our report at Studio System News as we take a deeper look.

After Dark Films
It seems a bit odd to take on a movie review of Courtney Solomon's Getaway, as only in the loosest terms is Getaway actually a movie. We begin without questions — other than a vague and frustrating "What the hell is going on?" — and end without answers, watching Ethan Hawke drive his car into things (and people) for the hour and a half in between. We learn very little along the way, probed to engage in the mystery of the journey. But we don't, because there's no reason to.
There's not a single reason to wonder about any of the things that happen to Hawke's former racecar driver/reformed criminal — forced to carry out a series of felonious commands by a mysterious stranger who is holding his wife hostage — because there doesn't seem to be a single ounce of thought poured into him beyond what he see. We learn, via exposition delivered by him to gun-toting computer whiz Selena Gomez, that he "did some bad things" before meeting the love of his life and deciding to put that all behind him. Then, we stop learning. We stop thinking. We start crashing into police cars and Christmas trees and power plants.
Why is Selena Gomez along for the ride? Well, the beginnings of her involvement are defensible: Hawke is carrying out his slew of vehicular crimes in a stolen car. It's her car. And she's on a rampage to get it back. But unaware of what she's getting herself into, Gomez confronts an idling Hawke with a gun, is yanked into the automobile, and forced to sit shotgun while the rest of the driver's "assignments" are carried out. But her willingness to stick by Hawke after hearing his story is ludicrous. Their immediate bickering falls closer to catty sexual tension than it does to genuine derision and fear (you know, the sort of feelings you'd have for someone who held you up or forced you into accessorizing a buffet of life-threatening crimes).
After Dark Films
The "gradual" reversal of their relationship is treated like something we should root for. But with so little meat packed into either character, the interwoven scenes of Hawke and Gomez warming up to each other and becoming a team in the quest to save the former's wife serve more than anything else as a breather from all the grotesque, impatient, deliberately unappealing scenes of city wreckage.
And as far as consolidating the mystery, the film isn't interested in that either, as evidenced by its final moments. Instead of pressing focus on the answers to whatever questions we may have, the movie's ultimate reveal is so weak, unsubstantial, and entirely disconnected to the story entirely, that it seems almost offensive to whatever semblance of a film might exist here to go out on this note. Offensive to the idea of film and story in general, as a matter of fact. But Getaway isn't concerned with these notions. Not with story, character, logic, or humanity. It just wants to show us a bunch of car crashes and explosions. So you'd think it might have at least made those look a little better.
1/5
More Reviews:'The Hunt' Is Frustrating and Fantastic'You're Next' Amuses and Occasionally Scares'Short Term 12' Is Real and Miraculous
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From Our Partners:40 Most Revealing See-Through Red Carpet Looks (Vh1)15 Stars Share Secrets of their Sex Lives (Celebuzz)

1. A slew of stars were given the honour of carrying the Olympic torch on its tour around the U.K. over the summer, but not everyone was granted the opportunity to run with the flame ahead of the London 2012 Games - who missed out on the occasion?
a. Daniel Radcliffe
b. Sir Patrick Stewart
c. James McAvoy
2. Which country was Tom Cruise filming in when Katie Holmes filed for divorce?
a. France
b. Iceland
c. Canada
3. Which Baldwin brother took legal action against Kevin Costner amid allegations he was cheated out of profits after selling his shares in an oil filtering business?
a. Daniel
b. Alec
c. Stephen
4. In August, actress Jennifer Aniston got engaged to Justin Theroux, her co-star in which movie?
a. Horrible Bosses
b. Wanderlust
c. He's Just Not That Into You
5. Saucy summer blockbuster Magic Mike was based on which actor's real-life experiences as a stripper?
a. Joe Manganiello
b. Matthew McConaughey
c. Channing Tatum
6. In July, actress Kristen Stewart confessed to an "indiscretion" with the director of which of her films?
a. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
b: Snow White and the Huntsman
c. The Runaways
7. Which celebrity couple got married in 2012 without first getting engaged?
a. Anne Hathaway and Adam Shulman
b. Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied
c. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds
8. Actress Kristin Chenoweth was critically injured on the set of which hit U.S. TV show last summer?
a. Glee
b. The Good Wife
c. Hot in Cleveland
9. What is the name of the actor Sienna Miller welcomed her first child with in 2012?
a) Jude Law
b) Tom Sturridge
c) Rhys Ifans
10. Sally Field had to beg Steven Spielberg for an audition to play Abraham Lincoln's wife Mary Todd in the critically acclaimed biopic Lincoln. Why?
a) She was too old
b) She was too fat
c) She was too famous
11. What was the name of Daniel Radcliffe's first feature film release of 2012 following the end of the Harry Potter franchise?
a. The Lady in Red
b. The Woman in Black
c. Lady Jane Grey
12. Which famous British actor took on a starring role in the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony reciting verses from William's Shakespeare's The Tempest?
a. Hugh Grant
b. Rowan Atkinson
c. Kenneth Branagh
13. Which Hollywood star married actor Adam Shulman in California in September?
a. Natalie Portman
b. Miley Cyrus
c. Anne Hathaway
14. Halle Berry lost a bitter custody battle with her ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry over their daughter in November. What is their child's name?
a. Nahla
b. Simba
c. Naomi
15. This Hollywood hunk can normally be found fighting for a good cause but in 2012 he was chosen as the rather unusual frontman for Chanel's signature fragrance, Chanel No5. Who is he?
a. Brad Pitt
b. Colin Farrell
c. George Clooney
16. Which actress despaired that she 'looked like her gay brother' after an extreme transformation for a movie role?
a. Penelope Cruz
b. Anne Hathaway
c. Jennifer Lawrence
17. Which actress named her new baby daughter Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence?
a. Tina Fey
b. Uma Thurman
c. Jemima Kirke
18. Which British royal was hospitalised during the celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee?
a. Charles, Prince of Wales
b. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
c. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge
19. Which TV legend was laid to rest four months after losing his battle with cancer?
a. Sherman Hemsley
b. Dick Clark
c. Larry Hagman
20. What is the name of the 2012 Bond movie?
a. Skyscraper
b. Skyfall
c. Skylander
21. Jennifer Lawrence played the lead role in movie hit The Hunger Games. What was her character's name?
a. Katniss
b. Katnip
c. Katbliss
22. Which film won the Oscar for Best Picture?
a. Moneyball
b. The Artist
c. Hugo
23. Which film star did NOT get married in 2012?
a. Matthew McConaughey
b. Daniel Craig
c. Anne Hathaway
24. British actress Carey Mulligan married which member of musical group Mumford and Sons in April?
a. Marcus Mumford
b. Ben Lovett
c. Ted Dwane
25. Name the only surviving member of the original cast of Dallas who was not part of the hit TV drama's 2012 reboot.
a. Charlene Tilton
b. Steve Kanaly
c. Victoria Principal
26. Which veteran porn star has been immortalised in two movie biopics due out this year?
a. Linda Lovelace
b. Ron Jeremy
c. Sasha Grey
27. Which moody movie star was dramatically rescued by coast guard workers after becoming stranded during a kayaking trip off the coast of New York in September?
a. Colin Farrell
b. Dustin Hoffman
c. Russell Crowe
28. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese joined forces again in 2012 to shoot their fifth movie project - but what is the name of the new film, due for release this year?
a. The Beast of Broadway
b. The Monster of Manhattan
c. The Wolf of Wall Street
29. Which movie won the coveted Palme d'Or prize at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival?
a. Amour
b. Cosmopolis
c. The Paperboy
30. In November, movie hardman Sylvester Stallone launched a stage musical version of which of his famous film franchises?
a. Rambo
b. Rocky
c. The Expendables
1. a
2. b
3. c
4. b
5. c
6. b
7. c
8. b
9. b
10. a
11. b
12. c
13. c
14. a
15. a
16. b
17. b
18. b
19. a
20. b
21. a
22. b
23. b
24. a
25. c
26. a
27. c
28. c
29. a
30. b

At the moment there are few greater clichés in the media than the freaking out single woman on the cusp of 30. Of course clichés are clichés for a reason worth exploring even through the lens of just one or two women as in Lola Versus. Unfortunately while the intention behind Lola Versus isn't that we should all be happily married by the age of 30 it still fits into the same rubric of all those "Why You're Not Married" books.
Lola (Greta Gerwig) has a gorgeous fiancé Luke (Joel Kinnaman) and they live in a giant loft together the kind of dreamy NYC real estate that seems to exist primarily in the movies. Just as they're planning their gluten-free wedding cake with a non-GMO rice milk-based frosting Luke dumps her. It's cruelly sudden — although Luke isn't a cruel man. Lola finds little comfort in the acerbic wit of her best friend the eternally single Alice (Zoe Lister-Jones) who is probably delighted to see her perfectly blonde best friend taken down a peg and into the murky world of New York coupling. Lola and Luke share a best friend Henry (Hamish Linklater) a messy-haired rumpled sweetheart who is kind and safe and the inevitable shelter for Lola's fallout. Her parents well-meaning and well-to-do hippie types feed her kombucha and try to figure out their iPads and give her irrelevant advice.
Lola Versus is slippery. Its tone careens between broad TV comedy and earnest dramedy almost as if Alice is in charge of the dirty zingers and Lola's job is to make supposedly introspective statements. Alice's vulgar non-sequiturs are tossed off without much relish and Lola's dialogue comes off too often as expository and plaintive. We don't need Lola to tell Henry "I'm vulnerable I'm not myself I'm easily persuaded" or "I'm slutty but I'm a good person!" (Which is by the way an asinine statement to make. One might even say she's not even that "slutty " she's just making dumb decisions that hurt those around her just as much as she's hurting herself.)
We know that she's a mess — that's the point of the story! It's not so much that a particularly acerbic woman wouldn't say to her best friend "Find your spirit animal and ride it until its d**k falls off " but that she wouldn't say it in the context of this movie. It's from some other movie over there one where everyone is as snarky and bitter as Alice. You can't have your black-hearted comedy and your introspective yoga classes. Is it really a stride forward for feminism that the clueless single woman has taken the place of the stoner man-child in media today? When Lola tells Luke "I'm taken by myself. I've gotta just do me for a while " it's true. But it doesn't sound true and it doesn't feel true.
In one scene Lola stumbles on the sidewalk and falls to the ground. No one asks her if she's okay or needs help; she simply gets up on her own and goes on her way. It's a moment that has happened to so many people. It's humiliating and so very public but of course you just gotta pick yourself up and get where you're going. In this movie it's a head-smackingly obvious metaphor. In one of the biggest missteps of the movie Jay Pharoah plays a bartender that makes the occasional joke while Lola is waiting tables at her mom's restaurant. His big line at the end is "And I'm your friend who's black!" It would have been better to leave his entire character on the cutting room floor than attempt such a half-hearted wink at the audience.
Lister-Jones and director Daryl Wein co-wrote the screenplay for Lola Versus as they did with 2009's Breaking Upwards. Both films deal with the ins and outs of their own romantic relationship in one way or another. Breaking Upwards a micro-budget indie about a rough patch in their relationship was much more successful in tone and direction. Lola Versus has its seeds in Lister-Jones' experience as a single woman in New York and is a little bit farther removed from their experiences. Lola Versus feels like a wasted opportunity. Relatively speaking there are so few movies getting made with a female writer or co-writer that it almost feels like a betrayal to see such a tone-deaf portrayal of women onscreen. What makes it even more disappointing is how smart and likable everyone involved is and knowing that they could have made a better movie.

A kids’ movie without the cheeky jokes for adults is like a big juicy BLT without the B… or the T. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted may have a title that sounds like it was made up in a cartoon sequel laboratory but when it comes to serving up laughs just think of the film as a BLT with enough extra bacon to satisfy even the wildest of animals — or even a parent with a gaggle of tots in tow. Yes even with that whole "Afro Circus" nonsense.
It’s not often that we find exhaustively franchised films like the Madagascar set that still work after almost seven years. Despite being spun off into TV shows and Christmas specials in addition to its big screen adventures the series has not only maintained its momentum it has maintained the part we were pleasantly surprised by the first time around: great jokes.
In this third installment of the series – the trilogy-maker if you will – directing duo Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath add Conrad Vernon (director Monsters Vs. Aliens) to the helm as our trusty gang swings back into action. Alex the lion (Ben Stiller) Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) are stuck in Africa after the hullaballoo of Madagascar 2 and they’ll do anything to get back to their beloved New York. Just a hop skip and a jump away in Monte Carlo the penguins are doing their usual greedy schtick but the zoo animals catch up with them just in time to catch the eye of the sinister animal control stickler Captain Dubois (Frances McDormand). And just like that the practically super human captain is chasing them through Monte Carlo and the rest of Europe in hopes of planting Alex’s perfectly coifed lion head on her wall of prized animals.
Luckily for pint-sized viewers Dubois’ terrifying presence is balanced out by her sheer inhuman strength uncanny guiles and Stretch Armstrong flexibility (ah the wonder of cartoons) as well as Alex’s escape plan: the New Yorkers run away with the European circus. While Dubois’ terrifying Doberman-like presence looms over the entire film a sense of levity (which is a word the kiddies might learn from Stiller’s eloquent lion) comes from the plan for salvation in which the circus animals and the zoo animals band together to revamp the circus and catch the eye of a big-time American agent. Sure the pacing throughout the first act is practically nonexistent running like a stampede through the jungle but by the time we're palling around under the big top the film finds its footing.
The visual splendor of the film (and man is there a champion size serving of it) the magnificent danger and suspense is enhanced to great effect by the addition of 3D technology – and not once is there a gratuitous beverage or desperate Crocodile Dundee knife waved in our faces to prove its worth. The caveat is that the soundtrack employs a certain infectious Katy Perry ditty at the height of the 3D spectacular so parents get ready to hear that on repeat until the leaves turn yellow.
But visual delights and adventurous zoo animals aside Madagascar 3’s real strength is in its script. With the addition of Noah Baumbach (Greenberg The Squid and the Whale) to the screenwriting team the script is infused with a heightened level of almost sarcastic gravitas – a welcome addition to the characteristically adult-friendly reference-heavy humor of the other Madagascar films. To bring the script to life Paramount enlisted three more than able actors: Vitaly the Siberian tiger (Bryan Cranston) Gia the Leopard (Jessica Chastain) and Stefano the Italian Sealion (Martin Short). With all three actors draped in European accents it might take viewers a minute to realize that the cantankerous tiger is one and the same as the man who plays an Albuquerque drug lord on Breaking Bad but that makes it that much sweeter to hear him utter slant-curse words like “Bolshevik” with his usual gusto.
Between the laughs the terror of McDormand’s Captain Dubois and the breathtaking virtual European tour the Zoosters’ accidental vacation is one worth taking. Madagascar 3 is by no means an insta-classic but it’s a perfectly suited for your Summer-at-the-movies oasis.